Category: Patristics

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Mills Mulls Signs

My latest book, Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols, is reviewed in this week’s Pittsburgh Catholic by no less a critic than David Mills. As if that’s not cool enough … he actually liked it.

In Signs and Mysteries, Mike Aquilina explains 25 symbols we’ve inherited from our fathers in the early Church, which meant everything — even life and death — to the people who painted them on the walls of their churches, inscribed them on tombs, even scratched them on the walls of public buildings and underground tombs. The symbols they put on lamps and rings and bottles and jugs reminded them of a counter-cultural, life-changing — at times life-endangering — commitment…

The early Christians took their symbols from the Old Testament (like the lamb and the plow), the New Testament (the fish, the anchor, and of course the Cross), or both (the good shepherd, the banquet, and the vine), and even from the pagan culture around them (the ankh, the orant, and the philosopher). They even made up their own (the dolphin, the peacock, and the lighthouse). In every case, they drew wider and deeper meaning from the symbol…

For us modern Christians, these symbols offer “an urgent message . . . from a distant family member.” It’s as if our brothers and sisters, knowing that most of us suffer from spiritual attention deficit disorder, had plastered our homes and churches, and nature itself, with post-it notes reminding us of what Jesus has done and is doing for us. Unfortunately, few of us know enough to read the notes. Signs and Mysteries is an excellent aid in learning to read their messages.

He points out that there’s an interview with the illustrator of Signs and Mysteries, Lea Marie Ravotti, posted here.

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Join Us in Rome in 2009

Here’s the word from the St. Paul Center:

The Year of St. Paul is about celebrating the life of one of history’s most remarkable figures, one of the Church’s most remarkable saints. It’s about discovering how we, too, can imitate him in giving the Gospel to a culture that desperately needs it. And it’s about asking for his intercession for the Church life and mission today.

From March 14-22, 2009, you’re invited to join Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Mike Aquilina, and Father James Farnan, as they make pilgrimage to Rome in the footsteps of St. Paul. We’ll visit the port in Ostia where he may have entered Rome, the prison where he was held captive, the site of his execution, and the basilica built to house his relics. We’ll visit other holy sites of early Christianity as well—the basilicas built over the first house churches, the catacombs, the arenas of martyrdom, the haunts of St. Clement, St. Ignatius, St. Hippolytus, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Leo. We’ll also visit the Vatican, attend a general audience with the Pope, and browse the cobblestone streets and ruins of ancient Rome.

Father Farnan will offer Mass daily in Rome’s most beautiful churches. We’ll devote time each day to brief seminars, led by our hosts, on St. Paul and the early Church in Rome.

The cost of this eight-day pilgrimage, which roundtrip airfare from New York, lodging, breakfast, dinner, and all entrance fees is $3550 for adults and $3199 for children.

We hope you can join us for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk in St. Paul’s footsteps during the year of St. Paul.

Click here for the full itinerary.

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Abraham, Martin, and Mithras

When I was a little kid, my grown-up sister Ro took me to visit the Lincoln Memorial. I was much impressed and wanted to memorialize the day with a purchase from the gift shop. I found the coolest thing, and right smack in my price range (under a dollar). It was a Lincoln penny with the face of John F. Kennedy engraved in the blank space, so that JFK was facing Honest Abe. It reminded me of my brother’s 45-rpm record of “Abraham, Martin & John,” which I used to play to death.

Anyhow, the altered penny came in a white cardboard frame that was covered with copy. The headline read:

COINCIDENCE? Kennedy Looks at Lincoln

What followed then was a listing of odd correspondences: “Mr. Lincoln had a secretary named Kenedy. Mr. Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. … Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Ford. … Both assassins had three names: John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. There is a total of 15 letters in each name.”

And so on. It made quite an impression on my ten-year-old mind.

A few years went by and I saw the Harvard Lampoon parody of my souvenir. It sent me into hysterics. The list began with the items on the original, but it gradually morphed toward the absurd: “Mr. Lincoln fought a war with the South. Mr. Kennedy fought a war with Vietnam. Both countries are populated by sneaky, devious citizens. … Mr. Kennedy was a Catholic. Mr. Lincoln was a Satanist. Each religion has eight letters in its name.” The grand finale was: “Mrs. Kennedy liked bananas. Mrs. Lincoln went bananas.”

You’re asking, I’m sure, what this has to do with the Church Fathers, and I’m glad you asked.

Persian Journal, an Iranian new service, posted an article so similar in tone to those little bits of my childhood. But I can’t tell if it’s reminding me of the souvenir or the parody. No matter. It’s titled “MITHRAS EQUALS CHRISTIANITY?” and you probably want to see it for yourself. SPOILER ALERT on the conclusion: “As you can now see, Christianity derived many of its essential elements from the ancient religion of Mithraism.”

Here’s another take on Mithraism and Christianity.

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In the Grain

Kevin at Biblicalia has posted an excellent review of Father Michael Giesler’s novel Grain of Wheat. Here are snippets:

The book is the third in a trilogy following the lives of several Christians in the mid to late second century city of Rome, from the end of Hadrian’s reign into that of Antoninus Pius…

The story itself is gripping. There is the accurate depiction of a palpable anxiety among the Christians, whose religion was illegal, and who were required to meet in private homes, which could potentially result in exposure by a jealous friend, or embittered slave or family member … The incidental details in the book show the author is very familiar with the period, and has done his research well. The setting is sufficiently authentic and yet without annoying extraneous detail that the picture given of Rome is lively and believable. This is a very enjoyable book. I hope the series will continue.

I think perhaps one of the best things I can say about this book is that I couldn’t put it down. It was a pleasant and a quick read (one late night). I would estimate its reading level to be young adult, so it should be fitting for any teenaged reader and upward.

It’s best to start with the first two books of the trilogy, Junia and Marcus. My review of those books is here.